And imitates, in vain, thy children’s cries.
Where will he stop?’
“From the practice of slaughtering an innocent animal of another species to the murder of man himself the steps are neither many nor remote. This our forefathers perfectly understood, who ordained that, in a cause of blood, no butcher should be permitted to sit in jury....
“But from the nature of the very human heart arises the strongest argument in behalf of the persecuted beings. Within us there exists a rooted repugnance to the shedding of blood, a repugnance which yields only to Custom, and which even the most inveterate custom can seldom entirely overcome. Hence the ungracious task of shedding the tide of life (for the gluttony of the table) has, in every country, been committed to the lowest class of men, and their profession is, in every country, an object of abhorrence.
“They feed on the carcass without remorse, because the dying struggles of the butchered victim are secluded from their sight—because his cries pierce not their ears—because his agonising shrieks sink not into their souls. But were they forced, with their own hands, to assassinate the beings whom they devour, who is there among us who would not throw down the knife with detestation, and, rather than embrue his hands in the murder of the lamb, consent for ever to forego the accustomed repast? What then shall we say? Vainly planted in our breast is this abhorrence of cruelty—this sympathetic affection for innocence? Or do the feelings of the heart point to the command of Nature more unerringly than all the elaborate subtlety of a set of men who, at the shrine of science, have sacrificed the dearest sentiments of humanity?”
This eloquent vindicator of the rights of the oppressed of the non-human races here addresses a scathing rebuke to the torturers of the vivisection-halls, as well as to those who abuse Science by attempting to enlist it in the defence of slaughter.
“You, the sons of modern science, who court not Wisdom in her walks of silent meditation in the grove—who behold her not in the living loveliness of her works, but expect to meet her in the midst of obscenity and corruption—you, who dig for knowledge in the depths of the dunghill, and who expect to discover Wisdom enthroned amid the fragments of mortality and the abhorrence of the senses—you, that with cruel violence interrogate trembling Nature, who plunge into her maternal bosom the butcher-knife, and, in quest of your nefarious science, delight to scrutinise the fibres of agonising beings, you dare also to violate the human form, and holding up the entrails of men, you exclaim, ‘Behold the bowels of a carnivorous animal!’ Barbarians! to these very bowels I appeal against your cruel dogmas—to these bowels which Nature hath sanctified to the sentiments of pity and of gratitude, to the yearnings of kindred, to the melting tenderness of love.
‘Mollissima corda
Humano generi dare se Natura fatetur,
Quæ lachrymas dedit: hæc nostri pars optima sensus.’[200]